


Taps

by Ribbonsflying



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Domestic Boyfriends, Human Steve Rogers, M/M, Past Violence, Vampire Bucky Barnes, Vampires, Vulnerability, vampiric violence not domestic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23785867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ribbonsflying/pseuds/Ribbonsflying
Summary: Bucky nosed into Steve’s neck and rested his head on his shoulder.“Now I know why you refilled my juice without being asked.”“No, it’s because I’m a sweetheart," Bucky protested.Steve scoffed playfully. “Sweetheart, my ass. There’s nothing sweet about you.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 14
Kudos: 108
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	Taps

**Author's Note:**

> It's not super gory. Bucky drinks blood though. I mean, he is a vampire. And there's mentions of a past incident that's kinda gross.

They were sitting together on the sofa, recliners kicked out so they could swaddle together- Steve’s body heat was keeping Bucky warm in their blankets.

There was a rerun that they’d already seen playing on TV, but they were somewhat watching it anyway. Steve had sat down with his plate in hand and just turned to the first thing that looked mildly interesting.

And when he was finished, Bucky removed the empty plate, refilled his drink, brought over the blankets, and curled up next to him, eyes darting casually between the TV and Steve.

“Work coming along okay?” he asked as the show went to a commercial and Steve turned smiling eyes toward his lover.

“Actually yes,” he replied. “I’m ahead of schedule.”

“You’re on a schedule?”

“It’s a mental schedule. Nothing mandatory.”

Bucky nosed into Steve’s neck and rested his head on his shoulder.

“Now I know why you refilled my juice without being asked.”

“No, it’s because I’m a sweetheart,” Bucky protested.

Steve scoffed playfully. “Sweetheart, _my ass_. There’s nothing sweet about you.”

Bucky kissed his cold lips over Steve’s pulse point and muttered against his skin, “There’s something sweet about _you_.”

Steve reached and ran his hand behind Bucky’s back and up into his dark, silky locks.

“Please go on. It’s fine.” Steve assured, tilting his head to the side a little to give Bucky better access.

Bucky didn’t pull back or readjust except to place an open mouthed kiss or two across Steve’s neck until he felt the scars already there against his lips and tongue. The latest ones were still pink and puffy.

He made a low hum and felt Steve scratch at his scalp gently and encouragingly so Bucky opened his mouth just a bit wider and effortlessly pressed his fangs to Steve’s neck. His teeth sliced through the skin so quickly that Steve’s heart skipped a beat. Then Bucky reached out and took Steve’s other hand, intertwining their fingers.

Steve whined. Bucky closed his eyes, drinking in the mouthful slowly. 

Steve tapped gently across Bucky’s knuckles with the pads of his warm fingers that were laced with the vampire’s cold ones.

Bucky always did his best to slice neat, easy punctures into Steve’s skin. He always kept his teeth far enough back to avoid major veins. He knew how to strike there- to corner someone unsuspecting and drain them that way within minutes. But that was never his goal with Steve.

Steve’s fingers tapped Bucky’s knuckles.

The warmth that flooded his mouth, flooded his entire body and all his senses gave a natural high so Bucky pressed contentedly into Steve’s neck as he drank. Blood wasn’t as easy to drink as water or tea the way some may have thought. Blood didn’t flow the same, didn’t have the same consistency. Bucky had seen films where blood moved like water, but in reality, blood moved like oil. A liquid by all accounts, yes, but much more slippery and hard to control. 

He’d gagged back when he’d first done this. Of course that wasn’t with Steve. Steve was still three hundred years from being born at that point. It had been with some poor man in Vladivostok who had gone to check on his son chopping firewood. Bucky’s sire had told him to go for the son, a man of maybe twenty, but when the older man came outside, Bucky took a calculated risk. Feeding from the old man allowed the son to stay and provide for his remaining family in a way the old man could never have done. Bucky had been proud of this logic, but his sire had called him weak and scolded him before darting out after the son and ripping his throat open. Bucky had watched in horror as the young man lie jerking on the ground as his blood spilled into the snow and his eyes stared at them in shock. His sire had kicked the son’s body with a scoff as he clapped Bucky on the shoulder and maneuvered him through the woods at the back of the property. Over three hundred years later and Bucky could still see the image in his head like it was yesterday. 

Steve’s fingers tapped Bucky’s knuckles.

Bucky drank leisurely, but not carelessly. Every swallow of blood was smooth and deliberate. Steve had described it before. Steve had told him that he could feel the open wounds themselves with the two fangs puncturing and the suction of Bucky’s mouth as his life-source was drained from him. Bucky couldn’t remember what that felt like. His sire had never drank from him this way, like a lover reveling in the closeness and the warmth.

Steve always reveled in the warmth too. As Bucky drank, his body warmed and it never failed to impress Steve how quickly Bucky’s body would go from chilled skin and icy fingers to warm and flushed all over just as if he were as human as Steve himself.

Steve’s fingers tapped on Bucky’s knuckles- lighter than before.

Bucky made his grip on Steve’s hand very loose. Steve smelled of paints and after shave and shampoo. He tasted a way that Bucky couldn’t pinpoint with any exact words in any languages he knew- and Bucky knew several. The taste was fresh without being simple or light. Bucky wondered if over the past few years if he’d just grown accustomed and sentimental, but each taste of Steve told him that no- it really was that Steve was simply _delicious_. He’d told him so on a few occasions. The first time Steve had carefully asked if that’s why Bucky hadn’t killed him when they met- that he liked the taste too much to never taste it again. Bucky assured him that wasn’t it at all.

Steve’s fingers tapped on Bucky’s knuckles- even lighter now and slowing down.

Steve closed his eyes as Bucky drank. Very quiet suckling noises could be heard because of how close he was to Steve’s ear, but Bucky wasn’t focused on that.

Bucky could hear Steve’s heart. Or rather, he could hear Steve’s pulse as his own settled into the same coursing rhythm, loud in his ears. By the way that Steve always reached with his other arm to hold around Bucky’s body, a hand on his shoulder or in his hair, one would think they needed the support of one another, but Bucky was perfectly capable of holding them both upright and Steve never had the strength afterward to do much of anything. Still, the gesture made Bucky feel warm even before he’d bitten down. They had never discussed it, but it always felt to him as if Steve were providing some kind of shelter, some protective embrace.

Bucky hesitated. 

Steve’s fingers tapped on Bucky’s knuckles- very faintly.

Bucky kept drinking. 

Steve was the strongest human Bucky had ever met. Physically, he was tall and muscular and took care of himself in every aspect- from regular medical checkups to a daily workout routine to a strict, nutritional diet. And emotionally, Bucky couldn’t begin to describe. Steve somehow balanced logic with mercy and compassion. His heart beat like a moral drum leading him in a march to do only what would make the world better than it had been before. Even when angry, he burned with a righteous anger that Bucky could never fail to be awestruck by. The only righteous anger that ever burned in Bucky was when it was fueled by Steve. 

Bucky did nearly anything Steve asked of him. He was damn near impossible to refuse which Bucky found nothing short of infuriating and entirely fascinating. Over his lifetime, Bucky had learned that being charming worked for vampires differently than it did for humans. A charming human may get what he wants from someone with ease because they like him. A charming vampire gets what they want from someone because he puts them under a kind of spell. But try as he might, Bucky’s ability to charm Steve never worked and Steve ability to charm _him_ somehow worked almost as if the power had been reversed. Steve had asked Bucky to not leave him and Bucky had stayed. He had asked to move in and Bucky had cleared out space for him that same evening. He had asked Bucky to do this for him and now once a month or so, he sat and drank from Steve with sheer reverence.

Reverence, of course, because it was such a sacrificial and trusting gesture from Steve, but also because he had to treat Steve as something delicate, vulnerable, and finite, as something to be protected at all costs.

Steve’s fingers stopped tapping on Bucky’s knuckles. 

When he stopped, Bucky had to as well.

Of course that’s what the taps were- an unspoken measure of caution between them- and with a final swallow Bucky pulled his fangs back slowly from Steve’s neck.

The blood seeped out of the remaining wounds and Bucky licked at them with small kitten licks just trying to keep Steve clean.

Steve’s breathing was shallow. His head lolled to the side a little as if he were drunk and his vision was blurred when he tried to look at Bucky.

“Shhh,” Bucky said before Steve tried to say anything. He reached for the far side of Steve’s neck and tilted his head toward his own and with the motion, he lapped delicately at the two small wounds on Steve’s neck that were slowly seeping.

Steve made a soft sound of discomfort despite the fact that Bucky knew Steve was happy. Steve had told him many times how the endorphins made him feel blissful and his body featherlight when Bucky would take his fill from him.

“I’ve got you,” Bucky told him gently, voice smooth as he brought a small cloth up to Steve’s neck and applied light pressure.

Steve hummed a low happy sound under his breath and Bucky smiled. He felt warm and satisfied all over.

“Now?” Steve asked, voice a whisper.

“No way,” Bucky replied. It wasn’t even a real question on Steve’s part. He knew the answer before he asked, but he constantly asked Bucky to turn him, to make him a vampire too. He’d been asking fairly regularly for the past four years. Bucky never obliged him. Steve’s asking wasn’t even determined or expectant anymore.

“I’ll take you any way I can have you,” he had told Bucky some time around two years ago when he’d moved in with him.

Bucky lived in a basement converted into an apartment in Park Slope and technically, Steve lived in the apartment above, but he rarely stayed there. He preferred Bucky’s dark and quiet bedroom where no natural light even had the possibility of reaching and where they spent hours just lounging together and listening to one another’s hearts beating.

“I still want you like this,” Bucky told Steve teasingly. He licked his lips to make sure his mouth was clean before planting a gentle kiss on Steve’s cheek. Steve would feel weak and sluggish the next few days, but he was always happy. He would give Bucky contented smiles and follow whatever requests Bucky made for him to eat and drink the things placed in front of him.

“I want to be with you forever,” Steve would sometimes tell him in the darkness. 

“I know,” Bucky usually replied. “You will be.”

“Turn me too,” Steve would say. “Turn me before I’m old and too ugly to be with you.”

Bucky always scoffed. “You’ll never be ugly. You’re only ugly after you die and decay and you’re never going to die.”

“But what if I do? Unexpectedly? Young people die every day, you know.”

And it always made Bucky unbearably protective. Steve was so fragile.

Bucky could survive avalanches and sinking ships. He was impervious to illness and too strong to be overtaken by animal, man, or machine. He was somehow even invulnerable to a broken heart (so he'd been warned).

“Steve,” Bucky begged, his head against Steve’s shoulder or cheek or collarbone. Tonight, it was pressed against his temple gently. “You are so gentle, so pure.” 

Steve had heard the argument a hundred times.

“You are so innocent.”

“I was a soldier. I’m not innocent,” Steve murmured. His voice was strained. He was so weak and tired.

“I kill innocents,” Bucky reminded, “Nearly every day. You don’t even eat meat because you hate the idea of killing for your own selfish needs. You’d starve as a vampire.”

“You turned Natasha.” 

It was a sore subject. Always had been.

“It was foolish of me. I was still thinking like a human.”

“Now you’re thinking like a creature who will be alone forever if you’re not careful.”

“Stop trying to guilt me, Steve,” Bucky said, a playful tone layering his voice, and Steve pulled a small grin.

He’d tried to convince Bucky to turn him when he’d been sick before as well. 

_“Save me from this mortal life and my tormented body and soul.”_

_Bucky had only spoon fed him the steaming bowl of soup and shook his head._

_“No, Anne Rice did good, but she got that part wrong. You’re sick and you have to be strong to survive the change. Eat up.”_

_“You don’t care about me, you monster.” Steve was always overdramatic. It wasn’t only a trait he possessed when feverish._

_Bucky scowled at him. “I could drink you and be done with all of this.”_

_“Did I hurt your feelings?” Steve asked completely sarcastically._

_“My feelings? Oh, don’t worry about those. No one else does. Some mock them so much they make mockeries of my entire existence. Have you ever heard of_ Twilight _or_ Dracula _?”_

But tonight was simpler than those moments. Tonight, Steve didn’t argue anymore except to say, “One day, my guilt tripping you will work.”

Bucky didn’t argue either. He only replied, “Maybe,” and kept pressing the wounds on Steve’s neck.

Steve hummed pleasantly, the endorphins running through him as he craned his neck a little, opened his eyes, and peered at Bucky lazily.

“Maybe soon?”

Bucky sat back and returned Steve’s pleased smile. 

“Maybe.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you like friends, so do I and my tumblr is [here](https://ribbonsflyingoutthewindow.tumblr.com). ♥


End file.
